Suspiciously bad Washington state bill: House Bill 5036
"Through money laundering, the criminal transforms the monetary proceeds derived from criminal activity into funds with an apparently legal source."
House Bill 5036 was introduced on January 11th 2021 to the Washington state Senate by Senator Manka Dhingra. It passed in the Senate on Februrary 2nd 2022. It then went to the House for consideration, but was kicked back to the Senate Rules Committee for a third reading (it has already been revised and re-read several times). In short, this can still be rejected.
Essentially House Bill 5036 allows for early release of people who have committed a myriad of sexual and violent crimes.
Two of the specifically listed sexual crimes are second degree sexual misconduct with a minor and communication with a minor for immoral purposes. Per RCW 9A.44.096 second degree sexual misconduct with a minor could be a foster parent engaging in sexual contact with a foster child. Per RCW 9A.44.170 an example of custodial sexual misconduct in the second degree would be a police officer raping an arrested suspect. Failure to register as a sex offender and repetitive domestic violence offenses are also eligible crimes.
The bill states that upon early release (as determined by a governor-appointed board which I will address later), the offender individual will be supervised by the state. The state will supervise “dangerous mentally ill” offenders guilty of “serious violent offense”s, but will not be held criminally or civilly liable for “its supervision”.
In simple terms, an offender guilty of beating his wife multiple times may be released and while under the “supervision” of the state find this woman again and attack or kill her; and the state will not be held liable unless their lack of supervision rises to the level of gross negligence in legal terms. The person who would make that charging decision would be Attorney General Bob Ferguson. You can see a post I wrote about about Attorney General Bob Ferguson here.
The basis for this new bill appears to be that Senator Dhingra wants to save money that is being spent on medical expenses for these criminals.
Notice how “because he or she is currently physically incapacitated due to age or the medical condition or is expected to be so”. This leaves it up to interpretation to the board whether this offender is low risk to the community or not. I also was not able to find in the bill how the “chronic or serious” condition would be verified by the board.
In summation: a dangerously mentally ill sexual and violent offender may be released early because they say that they have a costly medical condition. A board appointed solely by Governor Jay Inslee will determine whether this person should be released. The state will supervise this individual after release, with very little legal accountability if this offender harms another victim. The board will be paid fixed salaries determined by the same governor that appointed them.
Here is the definition of money laundering from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network website- an official website of the US government .